Fatty amides are endogenous components of animal and plant lipids that have a wide variety of biochemical and physiological functions (Bachur et al. (1965) J. Biol. Chem. 240:1019-1024). Endogenous fatty amides such as N-palmitoylethanolamine (PEA), N-arachidonoyl ethanolamide (anandamide), N-oleoyl ethanolamide (OEA), and N-arachidonoyl dopamine (NADA) function as signaling molecules in the central and peripheral nervous system (see, e.g., Tan et al. (2006) AAPS J. 8(3): E461-E465; and Lo Verme et al. (2004) Mol. Pharmacol. 67(1):15-19). PEA has been demonstrated to exert anti-inflammatory and anti-nociceptive activities, and pharmaceutical formulations of PEA for the treatment of pain are available in Europe under the trade name NORMAST (Petrosino et al. (2010) Biochimie 92(6):724-7; and Bacci et al. (2011) ISRN Surgery, Volume 2011, Article ID 917350, 6 pages; doi:10.5402/2011/917350).
Fatty amides, such as fatty alkanolamides and fatty aminoamides, also have a wide variety of non-pharmaceutical commercial uses. Fatty alkanolamides and fatty aminoamides are useful as foaming agents, surfactants, or intermediates thereof in the production of personal care products (e.g., shampoos, body washes, and facial cleansers), cosmetic formulations (e.g., blushes, mascaras, and lipsticks), and household cleaning products (e.g., laundry detergents, dishwashing liquids, and surface cleaning compositions). Fatty alkanolamides and fatty aminoamides also are useful as fuel additives. It is estimated that 100,000 tons of alkanolamides are consumed in the global market each year (Adlercreutz et al. (2010) Industrial Biotechnology 6(4):204-211).
Fatty alkanolamides for commercial use classically have been produced via costly synthetic organic reactions between a fatty acid or fatty acid methyl ester derived from feedstocks such as natural oils or fats and crude oil and an alkanolamine (Adlercreutz et al., supra, and Frost & Sullivan, “Nonionic Surfactants in the Industrial Triad” (2002)). For example, PEA can be produced by reacting palmitoyl fatty acids derived from coconut oils with monoethanolamine in a Schotten-Baumann reaction, as follows:

Fatty alkanolamides have also been produced biosynthetically. For example, OEA can be produced from phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) and sn-1-oleoyl-phosphatidyicholine (PC) precursors via a two enzyme process, wherein PE and sn-1-oleoyl-PC are reacted with N-acyl transferase to form N-acyl phosphatidylethanolamine (NAPE) which is then combined with lyso-PC and reacted with NAPE-specific phospholipase D to form OEA and phosphatidic acid (see Astarita et al. (2006) Am. J. Physiol. Regul. Integr. Comp. Physiol 290:R1407-R1412).
These methods, as well as other methods known in the art for synthesizing fatty amides, often involve inefficient reaction steps and are thus costly, from both an economical and environmental perspective. Hence, there is a need for improved methods and reagents for the production of fatty amides, wherein the length and saturation of fatty chain as well as the type of the amide head group can be controlled efficiently.